Inside the highest floor of the Hunter’s Guild Tower, the temperature was freezing despite the sun blazing outside. A wide, circular room encased in reinforced glass hovered above the city, built like the crown of a sword plunged into the skyline.
In the center of the room stood Grandmaster Li, watching with his arms crossed behind his back, eyes fixed on the floating screen before him. His robe flowed graciously as he moved, and his greying hair offered years of experience and knowledge. The screen before him flickered with real-time visuals of Ning Que’s trial, the cliff, the illusions, the confrontation with his past. The only catch was, he couldn’t make out why the system chose that scene as his darkest memory.
But to him, Ning Que did have a life outside of being a hunter, no matter how famous he might have gotten, so Grandmaster Li brushed it out of his mind. He glanced around the room.
It was lined with high-ranking officials, guild tacticians, data analysts, and a few masked figures whose presence was never acknowledged but always obeyed.
"He made contact with the shadow parasite," one of the analysts muttered, typing furiously into the system. "And he resisted it... without system interference. That shadow is D rank at most. He should’ve had some help to even discover it."
Li didn’t respond immediately. He leaned forward slightly, narrowing his eyes at the screen.
"Replay that frame," he ordered, his voice was quiet, but it silenced the entire room. The analyst obeyed. On the screen, Ning Que’s sai sliced through the shadow creature’s tendrils. A burst of dark mist and liquid exploded, accompanied by the creature’s shrill screams, then vanished. A simple move. Clean, and efficient.
But what caught Li’s attention wasn’t the attack, it was Ning’s cold and calculated expression.
"He knew what he was doing. How could he have even figured it out?" Li said flatly, his hand stroking his grey beard. It was a habit that helped him focus when his thoughts were scattered.
One of the officials, Elder Tao Cheng, adjusted his robes and stepped forward, crossing his arms in front of him. "What if it’s not him?"
"What do you mean?" Li asked without turning, tilting his head at the screen.
"We all saw the reports. Ning Que lost his abilities after fighting the S-ranked beast. His mana drained to zero. He was diagnosed with the dreaded neural instability and was declared mentally unfit for high-risk missions." Tao reminded.
Tao Cheng tapped the side of his wrist, where a flat screen like device was imbedded underneath his skin. A second screen floated up into the air, displaying Ning Que’s recent scans.
"Now look at him," Tao continued, pointing at the screen. "Perfect balance, mana control exceeding his past records. His reflexes are too sharp and his tactics too evolved for someone who just went through hell. That’s not a recovery. That’s a transformation."
Li was silent for a moment, then he turned to the masked man seated behind the long table, farthest from the light.
"What’s your assessment?" Li asked.
The masked figure tapped his fingers against the polished surface, silence spreading through the room as all eyes fell on him. "There are rumors," he said slowly. "Of soul transfers... reincarnation anomalies... A forbidden ritual lost after the last Rift War."
Another official scoffed. "You believe in bedtime stories?"
"I believe in what I see," the masked man replied coldly, turning to look at him. "And what I see... is a boy who should be dead, fighting like a man who’s already died."
That sentence lingered in the air like a curse.
"Pull the soul scan logs," Li said.
Another analyst spoke up. "That’s the problem, sir. We already did when you asked us to prepare the trial. There’s... no match."
"What?" Li said with a stunned expression.
"No match for any living practitioner currently registered in China, or beyond. Whatever or whoever is inside Ning Que’s body... doesn’t exist in our system." The analyst finished, a wary expression on his face.
A heavy silence fell across the room.
Li’s fingers tightened behind his back. "Looks trial was more of a revelation than an assessment." He muttered.
"Should we abort the simulation?" Tao asked.
"No," Li said. "Let him finish it."
The masked man chuckled quietly. "You want to see how far he’ll go. Impressive."
"I want to know what he is," Li corrected, his eyes now burning with curiosity as he stared at the screen. "And whether we can control him... or if we need to kill him first."
The wind howled through the alleyway like a desperate warning. Ning Que stepped cautiously, the grip on his sai tightening as he approached the warehouse. The ground felt too real, the screams were too sharp and his own heartbeat was deafening.
The moment he crossed the rusted threshold guarding the warehouse door, silence fell. The screams seemed to have vanished, and the resulting silence was unsettling. The warehouse loomed over him, darker than he remembered. The shadows bled along the walls, pulsing, alive. In the middle of the room, a hulking figure crouched.
It wasn’t breathing, it was waiting patiently for him. The creature looked like a wolf but distorted, its skin too tight, the limbs too long, its eyes glowing yellow but leaking a black mist. It had a long snout, with fangs as long as Ning Que’s height. And it wore a familiar voice. Ning Que breathed carefully, gripping his sai and moving closer to the monster.
"You let us die." The beast spoke, its yellow eyes brimming with intensity.
Ning Que froze, adrenaline surging through his veins like a cheetah chasing prey. "You’re gonna die again."
The beast lunged without warning, flashing its claws through the air and baring teeth. Ning Que ducked low, flipping backward and tossing one of his sai. It hit the creature squarely—and bounced off, barely leaving a dent. The beast didn’t flinch.
"System! Analyze target!" Ning barked as he ran across the room.
{Warning. Mana output exceeds expected levels. Classification: C-rank Shadow Beast. Type: Guilt-born construct.}
"A guilt beast..." he whispered. "Oh no..."
The beast attacked again, and this time, it was much faster. He barely dodged, one swipe grazing his shoulder, burning through his clothes like acid. He winced in pain, but knew he had no time to tend to his wounds. He couldn’t win this thing with dodging alone.
{Suggestion: Activate reserve mana.} The system’s voice called.
"Level up Strength and Agility again." he ordered. A burst of blue light surged through his limbs. His muscles tensed, bones cracking under sudden pressure. Power filled him, fueling his movements like a sudden rush of energy.
The beast leapt again, but Ning Que moved first.
His body blurred in the dim light, a streak of motion. He slid under the beast, spun, and drove both sai upward into its gut. The creature howled, but its form pulsed instead of bleeding. Smoke poured from the wounds, and it reared back, spitting a wave of dark mist.
Ning leapt sideways, rolling. His new strength gave him the edge, he knew he had to end this.
His hands gripped the sai tighter. Then, he blinked. A second version of himself split from his shadow, moving in perfect sync.
"What the hell—?" He paused, confusion filling his mind.
{New ability unlocked: Echo Step.} The system cleared his thoughts.
The echo form distracted the beast, its claws slicing into the wrong target. Ning used the fleeting moment. He surged forward, dodging once, then twice, each movement more instinctive than deliberate.
He jumped and twisted in the air, driving the sai down into the beast’s spine. Both blades crackled. The system pulsed inside him.
{Redirecting extracted mana... Enhancing impact.}
A burst of light exploded from the strike. The beast shrieked, its form shattering into pieces of ash and shadow. The warehouse trembled. Reality bent at the edges, then everything went black.
Hunter’s Guild, Observation Room.
"That wasn’t part of the simulation," the analyst stammered, staring wide-eyed at the flickering screen.
Grandmaster Li said nothing. His eyes were glued to the screen, jaw tight. Even he couldn’t explain what was happening.
"We have an intruder," the masked man said calmly from the corner. "That creature wasn’t created by our system. It was drawn from his psyche."
"Or inserted by someone else," Tao snapped. "This trial has been hijacked. We should pull him out!"
"No," Li said quietly.
"If this is a hijack," Li continued, "then whoever did it wants something from him. I want to know what."
The masked man chuckled. "He defeated a C-rank shadow beast. At E-rank. With no backup. I think we have an interesting case."
"He accessed Echo Step," the analyst whispered. "That’s an ancient technique. One we haven’t seen since..."
"The Rift War," the masked man finished.